When the next fire hits, you may be on your own. These are the issues that plague LA County’s emergency response

Each new disaster feels uniquely terrible. And each time a fast-moving wildfire strikes Southern California, we’re often surprised by the devastation.

But the conditions that drive many of the worst blazes are the same: dry brush and strong winds. That was the case for January’s deadly and destructive L.A. firestorm — as well as in the fall of 2018, when the Woolsey Fire killed three people and destroyed nearly 2,000 structures across L.A. and Ventura counties.

Listen • 23:27

Listen • 23:27

Reports about failures in response to the January LA fires and a 2018 fire have striking similarities

Hear LAist science reporter Jacob Margolis discuss the similarities between the two fire reports on our podcast Imperfect Paradise, and what they mean for L.A. County moving forward.

It's not just the conditions that repeat, though.

An LAist review of after-action reports released following the January fires and the 2018 Woolsey Fire found similar shortfalls in L.A. County’s emergency response. The reports offer similar recommendations for how to fix the issues too.

The county Sheriff’s Department told LAist it isn’t “reasonable or appropriate” to compare the reports, a sentiment echoed by the county Fire Department.

January’s fires “were unprecedented,” the Fire Department wrote in a statement. “And due to the unpredictable and shifting hurricane-force winds that caused a never-before-seen ember cast and house-to-house ignition, the idea that recommendations in the Woolsey After-Action Report are strikingly similar to those in the Eaton/Palisades wildfires, we disagree.”

Yet communication shortcomings — between government agencies and from the government to the public — are prominent in both reports.

“Communication is the No. 1 issue that we consistently see across virtually every after-action report for every kind of disaster, especially wildfire disasters,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia Climate School. “The way to do this better is to drill it, to practice it and to have a lot of community engagement.”

Communication between departments

In a major emergency in L.A. County, the Sheriff’s Department, Fire Department and Office of Emergency Management will all respond, as will firefighters and police from neighboring communities and from far away.

Coordinating all of those people and resources is a challenge for first responders, according to David Shew, a retired Cal Fire chief.

“The fact is that when big emergencies like this hit, there is a period of time that everybody struggles to bring some kind of coordination and effort to solving that problem, and in the meantime, there's a bit of chaos involved,” Shew said. “It’s difficult to try and coordinate all the resources and all the information in one place at one time in order to deal with it effectively. It just is really difficult to do.”

That was a problem for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Fire Department and Office of Emergency Management during the Woolsey Fire and the January firestorm.

An after-action report about the Woolsey Fire, released in 2019 and produced by Citygate Associates, described interdepartmental communication as “not robust.” And in January, a report by the McChrystal Group says, “Challenges with situational awareness and interoperability hampered effective coordination during fires.”

One of the post-Woolsey recommendations speaks specifically to addressing the issue: “Mandate common data sharing and ensure all communications, intelligence and decision support tools can interface with each county agency.”

In January, however, “inconsistent field reporting methods, the use of disparate, non-integrated platforms,” and a lack of a single interdepartmental communications system were again noted as points of failure.

The age of the county’s technology is part of the problem.

The Sheriff’s Department relies on a nearly 40-year-old computer-aided dispatch system that had reliability problems before January. During the fires, it hampered “situational awareness and coordination capabilities for field staff,” the report says. Addressing the issue could help “improve resource allocation and enhance overall operational efficiency.”

The Fire Department’s information-sharing tools were inconsistent and inaccessible to all units, as well.

“Incident commanders were often unable to see what field units were observing in real time,” the report reads, “limiting their ability to make informed decisions about evacuation timing, resource deployment and incident escalation.”

Updates to dispatch systems are in the works, and officials with the Sheriff’s Department and Fire Department said they are accounting for interoperability.

“We're hoping that whatever we move forward with, we'll absolutely be able to communicate with each other,” Sheriff Robert Luna said at a recent news conference.

Other communication problems arose in both fires too.

For example, standing up a joint information center, which is responsible for disseminating messages to the media and the public, was delayed in both incidents.

And the two reports say adjustments are needed to the county’s Office of Emergency Management to make it more effective. County supervisors recently approved studying how to make the office its own, more autonomous county department, among other changes, including increasing staffing.

Training and community engagement also were highlighted as priorities to better prepare the public for the next wildfire. That was done after the Woolsey Fire. The L.A. County Fire Department and the Sheriff’s Department have worked with community groups on evacuation procedures and risk assessments, according to the McChrystal report.

The report also highlights the effectiveness of these efforts and contrasts what happened during the two fires:

The public in the dark

Arguably one of the most concerning problems highlighted in both reports — and quite often during disasters — is effectively communicating with the public.

“There was a lack of an identified, single, informed voice addressing community concerns,” the Woolsey report said.

In January, similarly, “Many community members noted that they were waiting for someone to tell them to evacuate, which in many cases resulted in them leaving at a point in the fire that was much riskier than if they had left sooner,” the McChrystal report said.

Emergency messages also were hard to understand at times.

People were confused by language like “fast-moving wildfire in your area” in January. “Residents highlighted gaps in the efficacy of evacuation messaging, beginning with what they perceived to be the underwhelming urgency and severity of preparedness messaging,” said the McChrystal report.

Message formatting, which required people to click links to get all of the relevant information, was another barrier. And people had trouble decoding the naming conventions used for evacuation zones — letters and numbers, instead of landmarks and street names — according to the McChrystal report.

Both reports bring up problems with using social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) to get messages out.

That creates accessibility issues, as not everyone is signed up or has access to the internet. And during emergencies, it’s often unclear which accounts to turn to. It also has been LAist’s experience that social media accounts sometimes abruptly stop sending updates in the middle of a crisis.

The Woolsey report makes the point that the county wasn’t alone in lacking a centralized location for the public to find information: “Throughout California, no single public communication system exists that successfully crosses social, economic, age and generational abilities to receive emergency information.”

The 2025 report notes an improvement: that lacounty.gov/emergency, which is activated during disasters, does do that. However, the McChrystal report says that interviews with residents indicate “that there was no clearly recognized, centralized source of accurate information that community members knew about or were able to use for guidance, particularly regarding available resources and the latest evacuation routes.”

Cellphone network reliability is another perennial issue — and will continue to be during large-scale disasters. Some people said they didn’t receive evacuation messages at all, which could have to do with smoke and power shutoffs affecting cell networks.

Another big takeaway from the reports? More public education, training and exercises are needed so that people know what to do when disasters unfold.

The county’s response

One criticism of local governments is that they don’t act until it’s too late.

“With elected officials, when they say, ‘We couldn't have seen this coming,’ and, ‘This was unimaginable,’ people need to push back aggressively against that level of bulls--t,” Columbia’s Schlegelmilch said.

Reports, data and warnings about disasters are plentiful, he said, adding, “Let's start asking, ‘Why were we so unprepared?' And let's start holding officials accountable to the lack of preparedness.”

The McChrystal report has prompted action from L.A. County leaders.

Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger sponsored and were part of a 5-0 vote to pass a long list of recommendations in the report last week.

“The lessons we’ve learned from both the Woolsey Fire and the 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires underscore the need to keep evolving our policies and strengthening how agencies work together during large-scale emergencies,” Barger said in a statement. “We’ve made progress, but there’s still more to do to ensure seamless coordination and communication.”

Areas Barger and Horvath cited as examples are advanced satellite monitoring of fires and community engagement and preparation, like that in Topanga Canyon.

The Sheriff’s Department, as well, has “taken steps to launch a comprehensive tracking tool called the Citizen Evacuation Tracker, which provides real-time visibility into who has been evacuated, who needs to be evacuated and where resources are needed most,” according to the 2025 report.

In a statement to LAist, the Sheriff’s Department highlighted that and other technology, plus enhanced training.

The Fire Department also noted its training and technology improvements, including the use of FireGuard, a wildfire tracking tool. The department said it is exploring the use of satellite fire monitoring systems.

Both agencies said they support implementing recommendations from the McChrystal report.

County supervisors said the same.

“I’m committed to ensuring we don’t just hear these reports,” Horvath said. “We must act on them.”

Make sure you’re prepared

Just as the government has changes it needs to make, you should get your act together to prepare for the next disaster, as well.

“Being prepared for emergencies can … save lives,” the McChrystal report says.

Make sure you have supplies, pre-plan your evacuation routes, sign up for emergency alerts, and figure out which X accounts and websites you need to bookmark (we have a list to get you started).

Just as important as all of that: Go talk to your neighbors. As we learned in “The Big One: Your Survival Guide,” you’re more likely to be saved by the person next to you than emergency responders who have many crises to respond to in a disaster.

Check in on your neighbors with disabilities who may not be able to help themselves. We’ve got more information on how to prep for that as well.

The Woolsey Fire after-action report makes this point too: “The public has a perception that public agencies can always protect them. This is not always possible. The public has a shared responsibility for preparedness.”